Talk:Languages
Danish letters
What is the source of the Danish Æ, Ø, and Å?
Okay, what?
Under the "Matoran" heading, it says that the language "...would 'be not be' recognised by most listening..." Is this supposed to be "be" or "not be?" I'm inclined to think the former, but I want to be sure.
Avohkii Inscription
Mapaku una-kanokee wehnua-hakeeta ah-keelahe hanoni rahun-ahk toa-nak panokeeta makuta-tahkee ohnah-koo.
According to the semi-canon MoL novelization, that's what Nokama reads on the back of the Avohkii. Should we have this listed somewhere? Master Inika (Talk) 08:25, 17 June 2013 (PDT)
- Dude, nice find. I definitely think that deserves note. But I don't think I have the power to make that call. LockmanCapulet Talk the Talk|Walk the Walk 19:44, 17 June 2013 (PDT)
Old Matoran
To the best of my knowledge, the Matoran language is split into three distinct sections - ancient matoran, the language spoken only by the oldest inhabitants, old-ish matoran, which includes all the words listed in this article, and new matoran, which is the language translated to english in all the media. There doesn't appear to be a mention of this in the article, should I add it? I know there is no official confirmation of this, but it seems to be the only possibility, as characters (in the Chronicles books especially) offer to 'translate' matoran words, even for other Toa. Lihkan435 (talk) 04:25, 30 September 2013 (PDT)
- I noticed that too. I once tried suggesting it to the BIONICLE Story Squad (back when they were a thing), but they didn't accept it. I forget why. Master Inika (Talk) 11:44, 30 September 2013 (PDT)
There is an ancient dialect of Matoran, but there isn't a split between the current language and an older tongue as far as we've seen. There be a difference between a word belonging to an older version of your language and you just not having that word in your vocabulary. There is also the fact that certain characters in the early books had to stand in for us so that WE could learn words from this language. Words like Kanohi do present a bit of an issue since the word for mask inevitably gets explained with "it's a mask", which should be a tautology, but I think we can forgive them that and call it "author's convenience." ζox• Histories 
Zyglak
In the section of the Zyglak language, the reference it links to doesn't actually have to do with Zyglak. Master Inika (Talk) 03:10, 5 October 2014 (CEST)
- Found the right one and changed it. maxim21 09:49, 5 October 2014 (CEST)
myrendar?
the recently added pronunciation for marendar doesn't make much sense, do we have a source that says that's what that vowel sound is? if it were to be my renn darr, as is currently noted, i would imagine the creature's name would be spelled myrendar, not marendar. shouldn't it be mar-en-DARR? Intelligence4 (talk) 16:48, 27 February 2017 (CET)
- Eh, not. Greg said that. see:
[quote][quote]1) I have just a few pronunciations left before I can finish off the BIONICLE Reference Centre’s Pronunciation Guide, so if you wouldn’t mind, here are the words I still need (please include where the emphasis is too):
* Garai (I know this one’s in the encyclopedia, but I don’t know if the last syllable is pronounced REE or RYE)
* Kabrua
* Marendar
* Perditus
2) On an unrelated note, is the “Biological Chronicle” of BIONICLE in reference to the fact that the story revolved around the creatures that run Mata Nui’s biological processes or was the meaning developed before your time on the story team?
Thanks.[/quote]
1) Rye
2) kah-BROO-uh
3) my-renn-DARR
4) purr-DEE-tuss
2) The latter. Bob told me that was what it meant, but never said what biological chronicle referred to.[/quote]
[/quote]
- -- Surel—Nuva (Talk) 18:25, 27 February 2017 (CET)
- oh. that's weird haha. Intelligence4 (talk) 19:21, 27 February 2017 (CET)
sore-dak
even though greg said that "COAR dak" was the correct pronunciation for cordak blasters, i don't think we should document it that way, since in the english language the letter C takes two sounds, and can depend on the surrounding vowels. in this case in particular, the C could make a K or an S sound, so i think that should be clarified in this instance. (furthermore, if you look at "official" sources like the oxford english dictionary, you won't see the letter C in any of their pronunciations - at least i think... it's been a while since i've checked haha. google certainly doesn't, but i'm not sure where they pull their definitions from.) Intelligence4 (talk) 19:24, 22 March 2017 (CET)
- Err... Maybe the encyclopedia updated says something about it... If the official pronunc. came from the encyclopedia update not from the ODT stuff, it can be changed. — Surel—Nuva (Talk) 20:19, 22 March 2017 (CET)
- Unfortunately the pronunciation isn't given in the encyclopedias. I imagine if someone read COAR cold, they'd probably take it to mean "core" not "sore," but if you want to change the pronunciation to a K, go for it. I don't see a problem with rewriting the official pronunciations to make them clearer (I've done that already for pronunciations like Surel), so long as there's no way the new pronunciation could be misconstrued. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 08:50, 25 March 2017 (CET)
Languages Lacking?
Should the languages spoken by rahi be mentioned on the page? Like the one spoken by Kualus & Nuju, the Visorak language, Ash bear language, etc. --BionicleMax (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2017 (CET)
Kane-Ra Definition: "Bull" or "Bull of Legends"?
Just going to list the facts for your consideration.
It's significant that "Kane-Ra" is a compound word. All other known compound words in the Matoran language (Ta-Koro, Kofo-Jaga, etc.) mean two words that come together to represent a single combined meaning ("Village of Fire", "Small Scorpion", etc.), which would make Kane-Ra the odd one out if it only means a single word without any modifier.
We know that Kane-Ra has the title of "Bull of Legends". There's no evidence that suggests "Bull of Legends" is merely a nickname bestowed upon Kane-Ra after it was already named (as is the case with Metru Nui being called "City of Legends" by The Shadowed One, or Turaga Dume listing multiple titles for Voya Nui that are explicitly different in meaning from its actual name); as far as we know, it has always been called "Bull of Legends". We do have lots of evidence of multiple characters, objects, and locations with Matoran names and English titles that translate literally to one another (e.g. Mata Nui has the title of "Great Spirit" and Kanohi Avohkii has the title of "Mask of Light").
The single word "bull" definition does not currently have a provided source. I'm guessing it most likely comes from someone asking Greg Farshtey to confirm that each 2001 Rahi's name (except Manas and, evidently, Tarakava) translates to their respective species name in Matoran. In this case, it's possible that the person asking the question did not know about the "Bull of Legends" title, and Greg Farshtey (as he often does) could have easily forgotten that minor detail from 2001 and therefore did not consider it when answering the question.
One last point to consider, although this one is admittedly not very strong evidence: Kane-Ra is not the only Rahi bull. There is also the Artakha Bull and Fader Bull, along with the Mata Nui Cow if we want to group cows and bulls together. Therefore, it seems strange that just one particular species would be given a generic name, while other species are given more specific names (it would be as though we had three species of frogs called "poison dart frog", "American green tree frog", and... "frog"). Contrast this with Muaka, which is the only Rahi tiger and, therefore, it seems considerably less strange for "Muaka" to simply mean "tiger".
I do not wish to start a huge debate over this. I'm only just providing all the facts that I used as evidence to support my stance that "Kane-Ra" means "Bull of Legends" rather than simply "bull", explaining why I made my recent edit. This is so that you may consider it, even for just a moment, when deciding how to define "Kane-Ra" on this wiki. Please make of it what you will. Thank you for your time. --PeabodySam (talk) 20:54, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- all things considered, I don't disagree with this. that said, we'd need an actual source. THAT said, i think we need a source for the translation as it is, so... Intelligence4 (talk) 07:52, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Phanto and Misti
I took the citation for phanto and misti here to mean that those words may be close to the actual words for "air" and "mist," but are not necessarily the exact words. Like, I don't know, maybe phantom means air and mist means mist. :P Did anyone else interpret Greg that way, and if so how should we adjust the article? -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 16:56, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
So, the Scandinavian letters are even considered canon? Or just as a real-world thing that Scandinavian fans got to help them decipher some stuff in media? I personally don't see them as being canon, even as a Dane myself who used them growing up, since all BIONICLE media that came out were created in English first. Do you think the Matoran have those letters too, and those sounds? I do not think so, since almost all their orthography and phonology seems to be mostly based around Polynesian languages and their sounds. With a few weird English-like additions in later years' names. --Lukas Exemplar (talk) 15:33, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
- No, they wouldn't be canon. As far as we know, both Matoran and Agori only use the English 26, and also no diactrics. (Yes, I know the Scandinavian letters are not diactrics.) I think, fairly obviously, yhey exist for translation purposes. Don't want the Scandinavian kids to decode messages that are in English because their language can't be written, since those kids wouldn't know English. Been thinking about this a bit; German could use ue, oe, ae, sz. I do recall seeing cyrillic Matoran letters somewhere, I should probably dig that up. I'd be curious to see if there are others. ~ Wolk (talk) 17:15, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
- Actually, I'm not sure we can assume the English versions as being canon. What we have has is said to have been translated into English from the original Matoran. Although some of the movies, games, etc present words as written in English, I don't think we can assume that these are necessarily accurate depicters of the specific symbols the Matoran would have used in their language. I think one could argue that perhaps all the symbols we have from the various languages may be present in the Matoran alphabet.
- Added the cyrillic! The reason I think Matoran (and Agori) would use the 26 is because of the words and names we do have. But yeah, this is guess-work. I'm not 100% certain on where these are from but I believe both are from localized versions of TOGtB; I'd assume the Danish oens are too, but that leaves the question of where the hexagon ones come from, unless those were assumed. ~ Wolk (talk) 18:39, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
Link to Lexicon Page
How come there doesn't seem to be any links to the "Lexicon" page, which is really important considering it has been split for almost 2 years and the Lexicon page has all the vocabulary and impprtant info? Firespitter Lhii (talk) 23:24, 16 May 2023 (UTC)